This guy should not have been a lawyer.
You see, a citizen has a right to curse out a cop and call him names, and is statutorily protected from being charged. Not so if you are lawyers. Lawyers have less free speech rights than citizens they defend, we are learning. We have the Bar.
Don't get me wrong. A citizen who calls cops out in the street will still get his ass kicked, but at least you can't be prosecuted for calling a cop a bad name. As a matter of fact, in Broward, some whippersnapper of a young lawyer named Howard Finkelstein got an ordinance like that overturned in 1981 by a late jurist whose name was John King.
According to the ABA Journal's juicy daily reports, a former New Jersey judge, George Kopita has been suspended from his law practice for three months for an incident in which he allegedly told police officers who had arrested him on a drunken driving charge to “get the Vaseline out and bend over." Kopita had the good sense to quit his judicial post, but then wound up copping out to a charge of "threatening a public servant and drunk driving."
The Disciplinary Review Board had recommended only a reprimand on the ground that Korpita’s actions stemmed from his intoxication, but the New Jersey Supreme Court imposed a three-month suspension. No way of knowing whether this lawyer was hammered for the dui or his fighting words, or even a prior act of misconduct.
You see, a citizen has a right to curse out a cop and call him names, and is statutorily protected from being charged. Not so if you are lawyers. Lawyers have less free speech rights than citizens they defend, we are learning. We have the Bar.
Don't get me wrong. A citizen who calls cops out in the street will still get his ass kicked, but at least you can't be prosecuted for calling a cop a bad name. As a matter of fact, in Broward, some whippersnapper of a young lawyer named Howard Finkelstein got an ordinance like that overturned in 1981 by a late jurist whose name was John King.
According to the ABA Journal's juicy daily reports, a former New Jersey judge, George Kopita has been suspended from his law practice for three months for an incident in which he allegedly told police officers who had arrested him on a drunken driving charge to “get the Vaseline out and bend over." Kopita had the good sense to quit his judicial post, but then wound up copping out to a charge of "threatening a public servant and drunk driving."
The Disciplinary Review Board had recommended only a reprimand on the ground that Korpita’s actions stemmed from his intoxication, but the New Jersey Supreme Court imposed a three-month suspension. No way of knowing whether this lawyer was hammered for the dui or his fighting words, or even a prior act of misconduct.
However, he made the news with his choice comments to the cops, which included such intoxicated overtures as:
(a) “when the cops beat the shit out of a guy, I do the right thing,”... “I'll never take care of cops again,” and (b) “After tonight, I'm done. … Never again, I'm going to stick it up their asses. Get the Vaseline out and bend over."
Heck, in this county we have had former judges pull people over at gunpoint when they did not approve of the left turn another driver was making. But as a non-drinker, I ask you this: When someone is drunk, and looser with their tongue, are they not in fact letting out how they really feel? Should we not rely more on what people say when they are intoxicated for their true feelings then when they are sober and holding back? I would not mind comments on that. N.K.
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